Is The Comedy of Errors theater’s first sitcom? Perhaps its first real life cartoon. It should be animated.
This early work of Shakespeare’s (c. 1594) is silliness incarnate, and you must suspend all disbelief in its fairy tale plot and just go with the flow.
Two identical twin brothers both named Antipholus, separated at birth, have been searching for each other for years. Each has a servant named Dromio who are also identical twin brothers. You can see where this is headed. Shakespeare must have used an abacus to plan out all the mistaken identities, chance encounters, and misguided love attempts to keep his plot spinning like a circus acrobat. The “errors” the men live through in one day pile up on each other like a Keystone Cops car crash.
Shakespeare lards his comedy with witty banter and bad puns and keeps everything going pell mell with no time to think about how mad everyone is. There’s a subplot about a necklace, city strife between Syracuse and Ephesus, a rope, a flighty abbess, and various subterfuges that only deepen as the play progresses into comic anarchy. It’s all a piece with slapstick, jailed fathers, misbegotten and beaten servants, mistresses and escape plots.
Houston Shakespeare Festival’s production, directed by Artistic Director Jack Young, goes for a Three Stooges approach with zany sound effects, pratfalls, and a breathless delivery that has one sweating in the rush of it all, as if the August humidity at Miller Outdoor Theatre doesn’t supply enough. It tries to be funny, but it comes off as bumpy and shrill, which is not, I’m sure, the Bard’s intention. You half expect a finger poke in the eye or a two-by-four to be swung aimlessly. We get a swordfish duel, funny walks, exaggerated gestures, and shouting of lines that fade in and out with the wayward miking. Everyone tries too hard to be a comic.
The physical resemblance between the four men is neatly handled, for the actors do in fact resemble each other, while Shakespeare wisely keeps them apart for most of the comedy. At one point I wasn’t sure which Antipholus had made an entrance. As the two Antipholuses (Antipholi?), Jaiden Cunningham and Brandon Morgan, both in purple striped breeches, match wonderfully, but the two Dromios, Woody Minshew and Forrest Stringfellow, could very well be identical twins. They catch the spirit of the show with some dexterous pratfalls that Buster Keaton would be proud of.
Paige Willson’s garishly colored costumes help keep the mood festive when the action sags, but Jon Young’s Candy Land set with its seven doors is poorly used. A good farce loves a swiftly opened door or a swiftly slammed one. Here, everyone uses the center portal or briskly walks off into the wings. It would be a lot more viscerally exciting if they popped into and out of all the doors. The pacing could use it.
Will let his hair down for Comedy after the history tetralogy concerning the War of the Roses (Richard III, and Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III). He went blissfully inane for a change of pace and altered the face of English comedy for good. HSF goes retro – the rap song opening number doesn’t land because all the needed exposition gets garbled – and attempts a Saturday morning kiddie show for its style. There are numerous references to current affairs which had the audience laughing, but even Shakespeare at his most outlandish doesn’t need to be dumbed down.
The Comedy of Errors continues at. 8:15 p.m. August 6 & 8. Miller Outdoor Theatre, 6000 Hermann Park Drive. For more information, call 713-743-3388 or visit uh.edu/shakespeare. All performances are free. Tickets are required for the covered audience area and are available at 10 a.m. the day before the performance. Seating on the hill is first come, first serve.
At 8:15 p.m. August 8, live stream of Errors on YouTube Channel: @milleroutdoor
